BREAKING THE BUSINESS MODEL OF ORGANISED CRIME

And in more detail...

Up front, let us state that the Good Party does not endorse or condone the use of harmful drugs. Our aim is to curtail the use and abuse of these illegal (and in some cases legal) substances. Moreover, we are determined to destroy the models employed by organised crime that makes the marketing and distribution of these drugs a worthwhile undertaking. Central to our policy is the self-evident truth that the so-called “war on drugs” has been lost. And almost anyone on the front lines fighting the war will readily tell you that we have no hope of ever winning it.

Where is Australia's national drugs policy?

Given that this failure is widely recognised within the community and law enforcement, we at the Good Party find it astonishing that there is no effective national drugs policy, other than a hotchpotch of the usual motherhood statements. An occasional record-breaking bust happens, which allows the government and relevant spokespeople to insist that the old strategies are working, and then everyone again falls back into a disinterested (drug-induced?) stupor until the next big bust. Is the feeling at the highest levels that drugs are here to stay and that we just have to learn to live with the problem? No, Australia needs a national drugs policy, and the development of evidence-based strategies to tackle this debilitating problem is a major priority for the Good Party

Occasionally, a senior law enforcement officer like Dr Norman Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department, will come out in public and say exactly that. Dr Stamper visited Australia several years ago and addressed the Australian Parliamentary Group for Drug Law Reform in Canberra, saying that the battleground “has now become a war on people.” The focus, he believed, needed to shift to helping victims of drug dependency, most of whom are young, along with the creation of drug prevention programs.[1]

The term “war on drugs” was officially coined in 1971, and almost all the world’s industrialised nations signed up to fight it. The broad aims of this prohibition were, and continue to be, to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trafficking, reduce drug-related crime, and end drug-related death and violence. The “war” shifted focus to personal users — people — in 1986 when US President Ronald Reagan’s wife Nancy launched the “Just say no” anti-drugs campaign.

Achieving the aims of a prohibition on drugs seemed possible in those early days of the war, and governments worldwide have collectively spent trillions in the pursuit of these goals. But more than 50 years later, we still have the trafficking and the deaths and the violence, the drug-related crime, and the corruption of officials by the obscene profits generated by the illegal trade. Equally devastating has been all the lives wrecked by this failed war: the inadvertent overdosing, the poisonous drugs cooked up in toxic labs, the transmission of disease, the outrageous levels of incarceration and damning police records that can haunt a young person for life, to say nothing of the terrible damage done to many poor communities around the world, notably in South America and Asia, where illegal drugs such as heroin is produced.

In 2021, as Australia began to shrug off the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian Federal Police seized a whopping 425kg haul of heroin, the largest in our nation’s history. Far from gloating about it, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute concluded, after reviewing numerous sources, including the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, that this seemingly massive haul was merely an indication that Australia is consuming greater amounts of heroin. After decades of fighting “the war,” it paints a clear picture of our comprehensive defeat by organised crime. The reality is that the market has an insatiable appetite.

Achieving the aims of a prohibition on drugs seemed possible in those early days of the war, and governments worldwide have collectively spent trillions in the pursuit of these goals. But more than 50 years later, we still have the trafficking and the deaths and the violence, the drug-related crime, and the corruption of officials by the obscene profits generated by the illegal trade. Equally devastating has been all the lives wrecked by this failed war...

The use and abuse of narcotics is not a modern phenomenon, and neither is the human desire to indulge in them. Tribes in South America have been chewing cocaine leaves for millennia. For New Guinea tribespeople, the drug of choice has been betel leaves. Native Americans have been indulging in the mescalito cactus since time began. Central African tribes have long prized the effects of the iboga plant. There’s kava in Fiji. Psilocybin mushrooms in Southern Mexico. The list of examples is long.

Priests have used psychoactive substances in countless cultures. Healers have also used them extensively. Written history has recorded the use of drugs for medical reasons in all manner of ancient cultures. Addiction was openly discussed in the 17th Century. Britain fought two wars against China in the 19th century over the importation of opium. The point is, drugs, drug taking, and drug dependence are very much part of the human condition. In Australia, it’s worth noting that 40% of Australians over 14 have used illegal drugs in their lifetime, and 16% or over 3,400,000 of us have used drugs in the last 12 months.^[1]

While drugs are here and they are clearly here to stay, only 0.1% of drug takers are addicted or suffer serious health consequences from them.^[2]

In 2018–19, there were 112,474 drug seizures and 153,377 drug arrests. 26.6 tonnes of illicit drugs were seized nationally^[3]. The effect on the supply, though, was minimal.

The 9th Australian Wastewater Analysis Report determined that Australians spent $11.3 billion on methylamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and heroin in the year to August 2019, ICE being the most consumed illicit drug.

In Australia, it’s worth noting that 40% of Australians over 14 have used illegal drugs in their lifetime, and 16% or over 3,400,000 of us have used drugs in the last 12 months.

Prohibition has never worked

The standard weapon governments and police around the world have armed themselves with for this war has been prohibition. The logic seems reasonable. Prohibit the sale — if drugs can’t be bought, the problem goes away. Of course, it’s not and never has been that simple. Prohibition as a strategy first failed spectacularly and famously between 1920-33 when the United States tried to outlaw the sale of alcohol. The result: organised crime took over sales and marketing, which in turn resulted in an explosion of violent crime. And people could still get a drink. Sound familiar?

From Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, organized crime syndicates like Al Capone’s supplied underground establishments with large quantities of alcohol. As organized crime syndicates grew throughout the Prohibition era, territorial disputes often transformed America’s cities into battlegrounds. Homicides, burglaries, and assaults increased significantly.

What ultimately stopped the gangsters in their tracks was the repeal of the National Prohibition Act in 1933 and the U.S. Government taking back control of the manufacture, distribution, and taxation of alcohol.

In America today, no mobsters sell alcohol. Having been denied access to that market, they simply moved to the next prohibited product in demand — drugs — and repeated the formula of corruption and violence.

Another example of failed prohibition is a local one — prostitution. Up until the late 20th century, “the world’s oldest profession” was illegal in most Australian states. Stepping into this supply vacuum was, again, organised crime aided and abetted by police and the judiciary, and the illegal sex industry flourished. However, major law reforms across Australia in the early 1980s saw prostitution decriminalised, and today the industry typically consists of independent workers and some licenced brothels. Organised crime has since largely moved out of what has become an unprofitable market, and corruption is comparatively negligible.

Australia is a world leader in the strategies required to break a drug addiction. Many health professionals will readily tell you that cigarette smoking is more addictive than heroin. Yet, through a multi-layered approach that has included public education, pricing policies, restrictive sales, and non-branded packaging, we have successfully reduced smoking uptake in almost all demographics.

Australia has experience defeating drug addiction

Australia is a world leader in the strategies required to break a drug addiction. Many health professionals will readily tell you that cigarette smoking is more addictive than heroin. Yet, through a multi-layered approach that has included public education, pricing policies, restrictive sales, and non-branded packaging, we have successfully reduced smoking uptake in almost all demographics.

In 1974, when authorities in Australia took their first tentative steps towards tobacco control as a public policy with the mandating of text warnings on tobacco products, an estimated 58% of Australian men and 28% of women smoked daily. This has dropped to 12.2% (males) and 9.9% (females) in 2019.^[4]

The success of the Australian anti-smoking campaign has been achieved without prohibition. The key drivers were, and continue to be, government control, regulation, and taxation of the market. (Again, sound familiar?)

Australian authorities could take the learnings gained from extinguishing the wider public’s cigarette addiction and apply them to defeating drugs.

The madness must end

 Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” And yet here we are, continuing to pursue this insanity called the War on Drugs and convincing ourselves that one day we’ll get on top of the problem.

All government and police anti-drug strategies seem to have done is support a black market that supplies adulterated products that maximise the profits of organised criminals. And while it’s the criminal element producing, distributing and profiting from drugs, ironically, it’s the systems and outcomes engineered by government policies at state and federal levels that have virtually guaranteed this would be the outcome. The policies designed by governments to crush the illegal drug trade are the tools criminal require to continue their lucrative and deadly business model.

So, where do we go from here? Is there another strategy tried elsewhere in the world that has had promising results? Portugal is often cited.

In 2001, Portugal moved to decriminalise the personal use of all drugs and make drug addiction a public health issue. This was mainly done to reduce Portugal’s high rates of HIV transmission.

Other European nations, horrified at this radical approach, prophesied a massive uptake in drug consumption, a marked increase in drug-related death, soaring rates of crime, and the establishment of a narco-tourism industry in Portugal. Essentially, a drug-fuelled apocalypse. None of this eventuated. Portugal’s rates of HIV transmission fell, as did drug deaths and associated crime. Another substantial fall was seen in the public cost of fighting the war on drugs.

However, Portugal has not legalised the trafficking of drugs. The seizures of various drugs by Portuguese law enforcement continue, and organised crime still supplies the market.

Drug taking is a crime against an individual's health, not society

No one decides to become an addict. The circumstances that lead to addiction put addicts in the category of victims who require health treatment rather than a stint or two in jail. If your child or grandchild became drug dependent, would you want them to be processed by the police, courts, and jail, or treated by the health system?

If we end the war on drugs, what will take its place?

It’s time for a new approach. An obvious path might be to follow Portugal’s policy. However, if we were to decriminalise the possession or consumption for personal use, while there would undoubtedly be a reduced strain on courts clogged with misdemeanour drug arrests, the Portugal solution would have little impact on organised crime or curtail the adverse health effects of adulterated drugs. We believe we must go further and destroy the market that has allowed organised crime to flourish.

Tackling the heroin trade

The number of heroin users in Australia is estimated at around 74,000.^[5]. Although this might seem high, it is only a tiny proportion of the population and much lower than the use of other drugs. The majority are young males under 35. Eighty thousand users can be effectively managed once there’s an understanding of how the heroin market operates.

No one decides to become an addict. The circumstances that lead to addiction put addicts in the category of victims who require health treatment rather than a stint or two in jail. If your child or grandchild became drug dependent, would you want them to be processed by the police, courts, and jail, or treated by the health system?

As outlined earlier, your son or daughter doesn’t decide one day to become an addict; find a dealer and hold their arm out for their first fix. If that were the heroin marketing model, we would have far fewer addicts. In the real world, heroin marketing at the street level is far more sophisticated and insidious. It relies on pyramid selling.

This can best be explained with a hypothetical example: “Jason” is 18, and life is tough. After an abusive childhood in a dysfunctional family, he’s now under-educated, unemployed and mostly homeless, hanging out with a similar disadvantaged group. Another person loosely associated with the group is “Nick”. He’s a bit older and a heroin user. One night when Jason is at a completely low ebb sitting in Nick’s dingy loungeroom, he watches as Nick shoots up and reaches his happy place. Nick offers him a free hit with promises that he can forget reality for a while. And it works. The next time Jason is hating his situation, he finds Nick is happy to help him out. But Nick is just creating a new customer for his low-level dealing, supporting him and his habit. Soon Jason needs the fix to get through the day, but Nick says, “No more freebies”. Jason must now beg, borrow, steal, or sell to buy from Nick. Before long, Jason has discovered that it’s easier to join the pyramid by providing free fixes to others who haven’t tried it before. By now, Nick has moved a step up the pyramid. He is selling for personal use and also wholesale to Jason and others in his group who have moved from non-user to user to dealer. A new supply and demand pipeline has been created.

At the other end of the heroin user profile are professionals, doctors, dentists, lawyers, and teachers who are functioning addicts. These people hold down regular jobs, pay their bills, and have families and mortgages. For all you know, your boss, accountant, or mechanic may be a heroin addict.

Breaking the pyramid

As the Jasons, the Nicks, and people like them are by far the most significant core group in the heroin demographic, let’s stay with them. Spending billions on the focus of intercepting imports and the capture of organised crimes’ Mr Bigs has failed to achieve the desired results. So, what if, instead, we removed all the Jasons and Nicks from the pyramid? The pyramid would then cease to grow, leaving us with the existing 80,000 users. We could then focus resources on education, health, and replacement therapies, and the 80,000 would start to reduce and eventually cease to exist with no new users entering the system. How do we go about doing that?

The point to take away from these programs is that government agencies are eminently capable of managing better health outcomes for addicts than criminal elements for whom profit, rather than human life and wellbeing, is the primary driver.

The states have differing approaches to managing heroin addiction. In NSW, there’s the Opioid Treatment Program, which aims to reduce the harms associated with addiction (and includes addiction to other opioids such as morphine and oxycodone) and includes substituting heroin with prescribed doses of methadone or buprenorphine, synthetic opioids. The program has been called one of the “most successful health programs in NSW.”

Switzerland has trialled a heroin maintenance program where users who have failed various drug reduction trials are prescribed regular daily doses of medical heroin, substituting adulterated “street heroin”. Here again, success has been claimed.

The point to take away from these programs is that government agencies are eminently capable of managing better health outcomes for addicts than criminal elements for whom profit, rather than human life and wellbeing, is the primary driver.

The Good Party advocates for a three-pronged strategy that will finally break the cynical business model of organised crime:

1. Create tailor-made strategies for specific illicit drugs rather than a blanket “one size fits all” strategy
2. Have government take over the marketplace, thereby relegating organised crime to the sidelines
3. Substantially increase the penalties for the manufacture and importation of a range of illicit drugs

We would not attempt to tackle the entirety of the drug trade all at once. Our approach would be a staged one, and the first two markets we would dismantle are those for heroin and cannabis.

In the case of what we would call a “Heroin Reduction Program”, we would invite all existing users to become officially registered users. This would allow them a daily supply of medically prescribed “clean” (non-street) heroin. With the user’s consent, their medical supervisor would slowly reduce the amount of the drug prescribed.

As each case will be different for the supervisors, the process may take anywhere from a year to several years, and there will be many users that don’t succeed in being free from addiction.

The problem will have been confined to the 80,000 registered users, and we won’t have more people entering the pipeline. Also, and equally important, the illegal heroin market will collapse and cease to exist, as will organised crime and the corruption that comes with it.

The health system will slowly work through the legacy of heroin dependants. And perhaps in as little as ten years, heroin will cease to be a significant issue in Australia.

Our goals would be to:

• reduce the number of heroin addicts by 20% within five years of the program’s commencement (50% within 10 years)
• reduce the number of fatal accidental heroin overdoses by 80% within two years of the program’s commencement

The health system will slowly work through the legacy of heroin dependants. And perhaps in as little as ten years, heroin will cease to be a significant issue in Australia.

Cannabis — the farce has to end

Cannabis, aka marijuana, weed, pot, ganga, spliff, dope, and many other monikers, can harm your brain with effects on mood, short-term memory, and poor educational outcomes (for heavy users). There is also mounting evidence that pot can induce schizophrenia in those users predisposed to the chemical imbalance in the brain that can bring about this condition.

cannabis is also said to be a “gateway drug” that can lead the unsuspecting into the world of much harder drugs.

That said, it’s also the lived experience of most people who smoke cannabis — and in Australia, 36% of people aged 14 and over have used cannabis^[6] — that they have suffered no life-changing effects from usage.

The significant consequences of the war on cannabis have been the criminal takeover of cannabis dealing and a massive increase in the price of cannabis. This seems to be yet another pattern of prohibition: a police crackdown causes a temporary supply disruption; lack of supply forces up prices, which increases the market value and entices ever more ruthless criminals to take over. In this way, drug law enforcement acts as a force multiplier for the drug market. The money at stake also ensures that control of the drug market goes to the most ruthless and “protected” members of organised crime.

It’s time that we as a nation accept that cannabis is part of our society as an indisputable fact. Even in the United States, home of “the War”, whole states, including California, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts and others, have accepted that cannabis is here to stay and allow recreational drug usage. Here in Australia, the ACT has also decriminalised the recreational use of cannabis.

Continuing to outlaw the recreational use of pot in Australia makes criminals of a large percentage of Australians. It has become farcical.

In 2018, cannabis in Canada was legalised, creating a legal framework to tax and control drug production, distribution, sale, and possession.

Based on experience in Canada and California, we could expect a cannabis tax to raise well over $1 billion per annum. As well as providing funds to the health system, significant amounts could be devoted to drug education and treatment programs.

What about all the other drugs?

Many other legal and illegal drugs are currently circulating in Australian society, such as doctor-prescribed oxycodone and other opiates, Fentanyl, Percocet, GBH, and a range of psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin, and other newer chemical narcotics. It's time to take on board the lessons learned from the war on drugs and enlist authorities such as the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to help create strategies designed to curtail the usage of a range of illegal drugs so that harm to users and society can be minimised.

Implementing sensible drug reform will have a widespread positive effect on the criminal justice system by freeing up police for important work such as tackling domestic violence, reducing the backlog in courts dealing with minor drug offences, and emptying jails of minor drug offenders.

Anyone who has spent time in a hospital knows how vital nurses are. They are tireless, dedicated and significantly underpaid. During the pandemic, they were our heroes. But unfortunately, underpaid and overworked, they are also leaving the profession in droves. The Good Party supports nurses’ demands for better wages and conditions.

Pill testing, a commonsense harm-reduction strategy

Currently, only Queensland and the ACT are flirting with pill testing at youth events, having recently instituted trials. But seriously, pill testing is an absolute no-brainer if we're serious about protecting our kids. To begin with, we have to acknowledge that no matter what the police strategy, young people will be taking drugs like MDMA at these events. As there's a market, it will inevitably be supplied, and there's no guarantee that the back-yard operators cooking up these drugs will do it safely. We know all this as indisputable fact. But there's a genuine resistance within sections of the community to allowing a facility on site that can test these pills in real-time and at least verify that the concoction being tested (and potentially about to be consumed by your child or grandchild) isn't lethal. Numerous studies have shown that no one wants to willingly take a drug that carries with it a risk of death or coma. And at these music events, word travels fast via social media and texting that the drug on offer is, at best, a ripoff.

We have to acknowledge that no matter what the police strategy, young people will be taking drugs like MDMA at these events. As there's a market, it will inevitably be supplied, and there's no guarantee that the back-yard operators cooking up these drugs will do it safely

There's an influential puritanical element in society that staunchly maintains pill testing condones drug taking. No. Pill test is life-saving. Yes, pill testing is a state issue, but the Good Party will advocate strongly for its broad adoption through a national drugs policy.   

No more drug dogs at youth events

Research conducted by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) confirms that employing drug sniffer dogs at music festivals makes people adapt their drug-taking behaviour, often with dire consequences. It stands to reason. If someone with drugs in their pocket sees a police officer coming toward them with a sniffer dog, their reaction could be to take all their drugs at once and avoid detection. This behavior has been documented enough times, and with tragic outcomes, to warrant an end to the deployment. To do otherwise is to ignore human nature. Again, stopping the deployment of drug sniffer dogs at youth events will be a Good Party priority. 

[1] Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

[2] National Survey of Health and Well-being

[3] Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission Illicit Drug Data Report 2018-19

[4] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

[5] National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre

[6] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Report April 2022